Sunshine Spreader
by DrCyrusBortel
Summary: Romance! Horror! Action! Huge Explosions! Giant airplanes flying low enough to grill cows in a field! Gratuitous use of nuclear missiles! Duck and Cover! Radiation poisoning! All these and more can be found within the only (as far as I know) SVTFOE fan-fiction to feature a realistic (TM) thermonuclear war. In this case, the reality is more insane than the fiction!
1. Chapter 1

This author does not own the Star vs. the Forces of Evil franchise. This fan-fiction was written for personal amusement.

=/=

 **CHAPTER 1**

 **RE: TRANSCRIPT, HOTLINE**

 **CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET**

(PB: President Moon Butterfly)

(GSL: General Secretary Ludo Avarius)

PB: STOP ATTACKING OUR ORBITAL MISSILE DEFENSES OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO TAKE ACTION

GSL: IF WE ALLOW YOU TO MAINTAIN SUPERIORITY IN ORBITAL MISSILE DEFENSE, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DESTROY US IN A FIRST STRIKE

CB: WHERE ARE THOSE MISSILES GOING

GSL: LIMITED STRIKE ON YOUR MISSILE DEFENSE COMMUNICATIONS CENTERS RUIN AWAITS YOU IF YOU REFUSE TO NEGOTIATE

=/=

 **STEALTH BOMBER NACHOS 42**

 **AIRBORNE OVER THE ARCTIC CIRCLE**

Ten kilometers above the treeless tundras and snow-capped peaks of the high arctic, a batwing-shaped, tailless, jet-black B-2 stealth bomber (callsign Nachos 42) traced out a lazy circle in the sky. Since the beginning of the crisis, dozens of bombers like it had been kept continuously aloft, cycling between release points over secure, friendly skies and hard tarmac.

Captain Marco Diaz sighed, and took another bite out of his foil-wrapped omelet. It tasted absolutely terrible, and the dry air of the cramped cockpit wasn't helping things. Beside him, his commanding officer, Major Star Butterfly, snored loudly and obnoxiously, her flight helmet over her eyes.

Marco groaned. Star's watch had ended just before the bomber had taken on gas from the tanker aircraft, but Marco hadn't been able to sleep then. Marco looked at his wristwatch. They'd been flying in circles over the northernmost reaches of the continent for the better part of eight hours, and had taken on gas twice in that interval.

If you were going to be sent over enemy territory at a moment's notice, you wanted to have a full tank of gas.

Marco rubbed his eyes. Eight more hours until they could return to base for maintenance, proper meals, showers, and sleep. Eight more hours until the aircraft was once again a sitting duck on the ground, a helpless target to be vaporized by an enemy ballistic missile strike.

It was frequently joked that a nuclear bomber was safer over enemy airspace than at an airbase at home.

A flash lit up the arctic night. Then another. Then another. Marco's eyes went wide as a lance of nuclear flame streaked across the distant sky high above, drawing a thin line of ionized gas in the sky.

Marco gave Star a shake. "Star! Wake up!"

Star woke up. "What? Who? Marco! I told you not to wake me unless…"

Marco pulled anti-flash goggles over his eyes, and craned his neck to see the silent nuclear carnage high above.

"They're using nukes in orbit! A whole lot of nukes!"

The satellite communications suite beeped loudly and insistently.

Star and Marco both fell silent, and leaned cautiously towards the display.

=/=

FLASH EMERGENCY ACTION MESSAGE

FM: CIVILIZATIONAL COMMAND AUTHORITY

TO: NACHOS 42

TARGET ALLOCATION/CRAZY HORSE/42

INITIATE STRIKE PLAN ROMEO

AUTHENTICATION NACHOS 42 OSCAR CHARLIE DELTA THREE BRAVO

=/=

Star exhaled, and bared her teeth. "Well, Marco, my friend. Looks like this is the real deal. Toe-to-toe nuclear combat with the Monsters."

Star opened the safe, pulled out a large book with CLASSIFIED written in big friendly letters on the cover, and passed it to Marco. They had both trained extensively for Strike Plan Romeo, both in simulators and during provocative incursions into Soviet airspace, but Marco agreed that something like this required double-checking. Marco flipped the book open.

"Okay. Strike Plan Romeo: Nachos 42 target allocation. Primary target: Onatopp Underground Command Center. Primary target weapons allocation: Two 2,000-kiloton nuclear gravity bombs."

"Secondary target: 31st Rocket Division, Strategic Rocket Forces. SS-25 road-mobile ballistic missiles are known to be dispersed in Onatopp Oblast. Secondary target weapons allocation: Fourteen 500-kiloton nuclear gravity bombs."

Star looked at Marco blankly. "Uhh… Marco? We know this. Command bunker. Missile hunting. Kinda got drilled into our heads."

Marco blinked twice, and waved at the safe. "But I thought you wanted to…"

Star shook her head, and donned a cowboy hat over her helmet. "Nah. Just wanted to get my hat. Here's yours!"

Marco turned the sombrero over, and put it on.

Star nodded. "See? Now we look totally totally awesome! Fightin' monsters, here we come!"

A huge barrage of bright flashes lit the sky above.

=/=

 **PINEWOOD AIR FORCE BASE**

"ALL PERSONNEL TO YOUR BOMBERS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ALL PERSONNEL TO YOUR BOMBERS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

Jackie Lynn Thomas awoke to the sound of sirens, running, and blaring horns.

Janna Ordonia, Jackie's weapons officer, dragged Jackie out the door before she could react.

"Jackie, get a move on! Warheads inbound!"

Janna's words hit Jackie like ten cups of coffee, and before she knew it Jackie was outside, the bitterly cold arctic wind in her lungs, the smell of jet fuel in her nostrils, and the hard black concrete pounding hard on her boots – harder than they had ever before.

Ferguson took deep breaths as he charged across the apron, the short blond hair of his aircraft commander in his sights, running faster than he ever had in his life, faster than he thought was possible. He turned to see the crew of Bonehead 11 clamber up their ladders into their sleek, charcoal-black, low-altitude supersonic bomber – and nearly ran straight into his own (nearly identical) aircraft.

He scurried up the ladder to the cockpit of his B-1B Lancer.

"Weapons are go. Bombs are loaded, rack's working." Janna finished her checklist just as the aircraft began taxiing across the apron.

Jackie's voice rang out over the intercom. "Tower, this is Bonehead One-Two, we are lined up for takeoff."

Janna turned towards Jackie and Ferguson. Beyond their pilots' stations, Janna could just make out a B-1 bomber as it roared off the runway, black smoke pouring from its engines. Ten seconds later, another B-1 sped off the runway in an identical fashion.

Alfonzo, in the countermeasures' chair next to her, chuckled. "We're taking off in record time."

Janna smirked. "Whadaya know. Nukes sharpen the mind."

Bonehead 12 roared off the runway, rapidly gaining altitude as it sought the relative safety of the open sky.

Six minutes later, Pinewood Air Force Base disappeared in the blinding flash of a nuclear fireball.

The dulled shockwave from the detonation reverberated through the cockpit. Jackie frowned.

"My car was back there."

Nobody laughed.

=/=

I hope readers find this alternative world enjoyable. Feedback is much appreciated, and gives the reader a chance to influence further chapters.


	2. Chapter 2

**AIRBORNE COMMAND POST – ORBITAL DEFENSES**

 **SOMEWHERE OVER THE HEARTLAND**

One of the favorite traditional theories of nuclear war, Mutually Assured Destruction (or MAD), held that the threat of nuclear war – resulting in massive destruction to the industrial and population base of a nation – would scare ("deter") everybody from using nuclear weaponry, thereby preventing anyone from resorting to nuclear warfare to settle conflicts.

An effective defense against ballistic missiles would reduce greatly the fear of nuclear retaliation of the side possessing it. As such, the side with an effective defense would be more likely to use nuclear weapons, triggering a nuclear war. Effective missile defenses, if possessed by only one side, were thus considered highly destabilizing by MAD theorists.

Other theorists had other things to say about ballistic missile defenses, but abstract theories were all far from the minds of the men and women tasked with operating the ballistic missile defenses.

The cabin of the modified double-decker jumbo jet was abuzz with activity. Rows of airmen and women manned computerized workstations, and displays decked the upper walls, giving the brass an overview of the battle raging in orbit – the ultimate test of the most expensive weapons system ever built.

Arrows, representing enemy ballistic missiles, rose in their thousands from the curved planetary surface. Even a "limited" strike would need _very_ substantial punch to swamp the orbital defenses it had been launched to decapitate.

Thousands of Brilliant Pebbles – small, pig-sized satellites, each with a single anti-missile missile wrapped in a protective jacket – came to life, screaming downwards automatically to blast the enemy ballistic missiles from the sky before they could release their warheads. Blue ellipses falling upon red arrows.

Omnitraxus Prime squinted at the display. It was too small. Everything aboard the command aircraft was too small. Back in the good ol' days, the display would have been ten feet tall and thirty feet across, covering an entire wall of an underground command bunker.

But that was before satellite-mounted space radars capable of tracking trucks, trains, and ships. Before precision-guided nuclear missiles, accurate enough to hit a tennis court from a continent away – again and again if necessary.

No command bunker – even one buried under a mountain - could withstand such an onslaught. Even if it could, destruction of air intakes, entranceways, and communications lines by precisely applied nuclear force would render any such bunker blind, deaf, and dumb. Useless.

In the modern age, mobility and stealth, not rock, ensured survival.

The first of the anti-missile missiles hit their targets. Cheers erupted throughout the cabin.

Suddenly, a swathe of blue ellipses disappeared from the screen, and the screen blacked out.

"Sir, something's wrong."

The screen came back online – from another satellite, Omnitraxus noted. Confetti, skewers of sparkles, and red arrows filled the screen.

"What's that?"

Omnitraxus Prime rubbed his skeletal chin. "The enemy has detonated nuclear devices to clear our orbital defenses. They appear to have been a mix of nuclear plasma lances, buckshot blasters, and other directed energy weapons, launched alongside their missiles. Most inventive, those monsters."

A red arrow shattered, and a swarm of triangles appeared on-screen.

Omnitraxus Prime's baritone echoed through the aircraft. "Initiate laser sweep!"

=/=

Leaving the radioactive clouds of plasma behind, scores of cone-shaped nuclear warheads hurtled noiselessly through space. Beside them, hundreds of aluminium party balloons – decoys – and tuna-can-shaped jammers fell in formation, hoping to confuse and complicate the defense.

A laser swept across them, one by one. While far from sufficient to penetrate the tough hides of the warheads – or even burn through the thin foil of the balloons, the light pressure was enough to push the foil balloon decoys ever so slightly, changing their trajectories by tiny amounts…. Just enough for a laser rangefinder to detect.

The heavier warheads, of course, stayed put.

=/=

Four-fifths of the triangles – decoys - fell away, and more ovals climbed to meet the remainder.

Another series of arrows appeared on-screen.

"Sir, we have a submarine launch just ahead of the flock…"

The screen blanked out, and more confetti and lines filled the screen that reappeared.

"The enemy has tasked submarines with destroying our defenses. Enemy warheads will make it through. Omnitraxus Prime has spoken!"

The horrified crew turned to their shapeless leader.

"Also, we really should have toughened up the midcourse and terminal aspects of our defense network. I told them we needed a layered defense, but we didn't have the budget for it. Defense in diversity, people!"

The celestial deity turned to its minions. "Uh… right. Omnitraxus Prime has spoken!"

As if on cue, a second, larger wave of red arrows began ascending from the enemy heartland.

And there were now fewer blue ellipses to meet them.

=/=

 **AIRBORNE COMMAND POST – NATIONAL COMMAND AUTHORITY (NCA)**

 **ALSO FLYING IN CIRCLES**

President Moon Butterfly sighed at the latest piece of bad news, and sunk into her chair.

"What are the second wave of warheads targeted against?"

The attaché glanced at the printout

"So far, the MIRVs – warheads - appear to be targeted at our missile silos and bomber bases. We launched first, so we're guessing they have a good idea which silos are empty and which ones are full…"

Rhombulus charged into the room. "Madame President, uhhh… President Butterfly! The Monsters just tore a hole in the defense grid! We need to launch everything before it's too late!"

Moon rolled her eyes. "Yes, Rhombulus, I heard."

Lekmet plodded in behind him. "Mehh."

Moon nodded comfortingly. "Thank you, Lekmet, for reminding us that the force commander will launch them himself, and that the bombers are already taking off as fast as they can."

Her eyes narrowed, and her voice turned cold. "When I was advised to retaliate massively, I was informed that our defense system would "probably" absorb a "disorganized retaliatory strike"? What did the enemy do instead?"

Lekmet seemed to shrink. "Mehh."

Moon pursed her lips. "Yes, Lekmet. They launched on warning. They launched a fully constituted follow-on strike before our missiles cleared the atmosphere."

She turned to the attaché. "How many people are we going to lose?"

The attaché sighed. "One to ten million people, depending on luck, wind patterns and local preparedness. Fallout will be extensive, since we expect the enemy to use groundbursts to dig out the silos instead of clean, city-killing airbursts. We'll lose a few cities and towns too, since those bomber bases weren't all built in the middle of nowhere."

Rhombulus raised his arms. "If we had a proper civil defense program and forced everyone to stock two weeks of food in their houses, duck-and-cover, and watch thirty-minute instructional videos, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

Moon glared at the crystal-headed reptilian, wanting nothing more than to scream at him. Even if he was right. Instead, she cleared her head, and worked the problem. "Do we have any good news?"

The attaché looked puzzled, and Lekmet frowned. "This is all good news."

Moon gaped. "What? Ten million imminent deaths is good news?"

Rhombulus interrupted the attaché before he could speak. "The monsters are playing our game! They're only throwing nukes at military and industrial targets!"

The attaché spoke. "The pattern of attack indicates that the monsters are willing to fight a limited nuclear war, which we based our own war plans on."

Moon did not seem to follow.

Lekmet finally spoke. "Mehh."

Moon nodded. "Let me run through your theory again. Country A destroys most of the nuclear forces of the country B with nuclear missiles, but spares their cities. Country B cannot destroy much of the enemy's nuclear arsenal with the few missiles it has left."

Lekmet nodded.

Moon tried to follow. "As ruler of Country B, I should destroy Country A's cities and retaliate, right?"

Lekmet shook his head.

Moon tapped her head. "Right. Country A would then destroy my own cities. Everyone loses their cities. But Country A has a bigger nuclear arsenal than I do. So they win."

Lekmet motioned for Moon to continue.

"Therefore, as ruler of Country B, I should save my people by declaring surrender! Country A has a bigger arsenal, and still wins, but we both keep our cities! We can rise to fight again! Thank you for reminding me, Lekmet, of the theory of limited nuclear war; instead of throwing nukes at cities, we only throw nukes at enemy nukes! Then we can decide who wins and loses like in normal war, instead of committing mutual suicide. Obviously, this only works if both sides cooperate in fighting a military-targets-only nuclear war."

"Mehhh!"

"Since the monsters have decided to only strike military targets, that means they are cooperating in our war! Which means… we might still win this! That is indeed excellent news. Thank you, Lekmet. Very few have your way with ideas." Moon gave Lekmet a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

The attaché stepped forward. "We have more good news. The first wave – the limited strike – won't hit the ground-based or space-based nodes of our orbital defense grid until we've had the opportunity to attrit the second wave."

Moon's eyes widened. "Are you telling me that they launched too early?"

Lekmet smiled triumphantly. "Mehh."

Moon nodded, impressed by Lekmet's foresight. "Well, I'll have to apologize for doubting you and Mina, Lekmet. Placing ballistic missile submarines near their coasts really did pay off handsomely. We couldn't have put warheads on their missile fields within five minutes otherwise."

=/=

 ** _YET ANOTHER_** **AIRBORNE COMMAND POST – NUCLEAR FORCES**

 **THIS ONE'S SMALLER AND IS TRAILING STREAMERS**

The modified commercial airliner trailed a lazy circle in the sky, a long string of what appeared to be streamers – actually an extremely low frequency (ELF) antenna - dangling from its tail. A large, three-engined tanker aircraft trailed a few kilometers behind it, ready to top off the "Mercury" command aircraft for as long as it took for the nuclear war to finish… or until the fuel ran out.

The cabin was abuzz with activity. Rows of airmen and women monitored screens, coordinating the hundreds of bombers, tens of submarines, and thousands of missiles (in trucks, trains, and silos) that were a part of the nuclear attack in progress. At the center of it all, an anchor in a sea of controlled chaos, stood General Mina Loveberry.

"General Loveberry, ma'am. Our orders on the E-L-F are out. Every submarine this side of the planet should have their orders. And we just received a word of congratulations from National Command Authority."

Extremely low frequency radio waves were capable of penetrating water, and as such were used by the command aircraft to communicate with the ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) currently at sea. Scattered across the depths of the world's oceans, the SSBN force was virtually un-findable and therefore un-sinkable – the perfect guarantee that the nation would have a nuclear force left after an enemy sneak attack – or an initial nuclear exchange.

Mina gleefully rubbed her hands. "Excellent, sergeant. Our subs just off their coast kicked their Green behinds for sure. Those darn dirty Monsters probably didn't know what hit 'em!"

Ballistic missile submarines could also be hidden close to the enemy's shores, where their missiles could be launched on short-range, high-speed depressed trajectories that might give less than five minutes of warning.

Another airman raised his hand. "General? We have Omnitraxus Prime on the phone." The airman lowered his head in concentration. "He says that the enemy has managed to blast a hole in his orbital defense grid, and that we're going to lose the silos at Daisy Plains in six minutes."

Mina waved an arm. "Well, launch the blasted things!"

The airman looked lost. "Uh, ma'am? The Plan says that we should hold them in reserve and then shoot them at surviving enemy missile silos… and there are five sets of contingency targets for me to pick."

"The enemy just changed the Plan! Get outta the way!" Mina pushed the airman aside, selected a list of shipyards, and pulled the airman back to his station. "Start yappin!"

"Meerkat 6-2, Meerkat 6-2, this is Snow White. Launch immediately according to strike plan Kilo-Five. Repeat, Strike Plan Kilo-Five, and seal up for imminent enemy strike. Authentication code is…"

Mina seethed. With the silo-launched missiles expended, the task of hitting the enemy silos would have to be transferred to either the Navy's submarines, the limited number of truck-mounted missiles, or the slowpoke bombers.

She would make sure they heard about this fiasco at budget time, oh yes. No more would Orbital Defense get more than its fair share of the pie.

Mina smiled a little smile, and turned back to her underlings.

=/=

Across thousands of kilometers, hundreds of teams of steely-eyed missilemen (variously drunk, bored, or exhausted) received authenticated orders, stumbled to their stations, conducted checks, turned keys (in pairs, by two separate individuals, at the same time), and pressed buttons.

For the second time in fifteen minutes, missiles roared out of buried silos in their hundreds, and began climbing rapidly into clear blue skies.

=/=

 **SUBURBIA**

"Rafael, honey? It's time to get to the basement. The missiles'll be here any second now."

Mr. Diaz turned away from the window and towards his wife, a box of irreplaceable knick-knacks in his hands. Angie lifted the final bag of groceries, and headed towards the basement.

"I… just wanted to see our street one more time. While it is still… normal."

Mrs. Diaz rolled her eyes. "We're fifteen miles from the city center, and have food, waste bags, and water for six weeks – a lot more than the two weeks the government tells us to stock. As long as we stay indoors and keep the radioactive dust from getting in the house, we'll be fine. Unless they decide to waste thirty nuclear warheads to carpet-bomb the metropolitan area or something crazy like that. But they're probably aiming for military sites anyway."

A normal-sized missile warhead could be expected to flatten lightly built buildings up to three miles from ground zero, and burn skin and shatter windows up to ten miles away. If detonated high above the ground to maximize blast radius, fallout would likely be low – and the blast zone would probably be safe within two weeks anyway.

People scoffed at "duck and cover", but since flying glass and flash burns was expected to cause the majority of injuries beyond three miles from ground zero... it was absolutely essential.

Mr. Diaz shook his head. "It… won't be the same."

Angie walked up to her husband, and gave him a hug. "I know, honey. But it's time to get underground. Just in case they do carpet-bomb us."

Mr. Diaz nodded, but stopped.

"Wait." Rafael slid open the window, placed a white dish on the windowsill, closed the window, and replaced the tape sealing the edge.

=/=

Many hours later, a speck of radioactive ash, kicked up from the ground-bursting nuclear fireball that demolished the empty silos and occupied launch control bunkers of a missile field five hundred miles away, drifted down from the clouds. It wafted off the roof, fell past the Diaz's window, and settled onto Rafael's white dish like a tiny black snowflake.

Then came another. And another. And another.

It was raining fallout.

=/=

 _Airborne command posts have been the mainstay of survivable nuclear command and control systems for the last forty years. Intercontinental ballistic missiles accurate enough to hit a basketball court have been around for about as long. A lot of the technology depicted exists. Brilliant Pebble missile defense systems were extensively studied by the US (over the last forty years), but not deployed. Nuclear weapon effects were roughly (perhaps poorly) estimated with the online tool NUKEMAP, by Alex Weinstein._


	3. Chapter 3

**Stealth Bomber Nachos 42**

 **Approaching enemy airspace**

Star flipped a pair of switches. "Countermeasures… on. We are stealthed up and ready to rumble!"

A light began beeping insistently. Marco groaned. "Contrail warning. Changing altitude to… 15,000 feet."

To make the aircraft less detectable to enemy eyeballs, the B-2 had a contrail sensor, warning the aircrew of the presence of a long, easily visible white trail behind the aircraft and allowing them to take action.

The contrail warning light stopped beeping.

The radar warning light lit up. Star's eyes narrowed. "Search radar. We're fine."

Radar works like a flashlight. Light energy from a flashlight bounces off objects into our eyeballs, allowing us to see them. Because our eyes are not very sensitive, and flashlights are not very bright, we can only see a short distance into the dark night.

Similarly, a radar emits radio waves or microwaves, which travel through the air until they hit something and bounce off. Some of those radio waves and microwaves are reflected back towards the emitter, where they can be detected. Since the radio antennae used for detection are _extremely_ sensitive, sufficiently powerful radars can detect objects hundreds, even thousands of kilometers away – as long as they are above the horizon, and within line-of-sight.

Stealth works by shaping airplanes so that they reflect radar energy in directions away from the emitter, and by covering the aircraft in materials that absorb, rather than reflect, radar energy – hence the flat, featureless shape and tedious skincare requirements of Marco and Star's stealth bomber.

Another radar warning light lit up. Then another. And another. Marco shuddered. "Uh… Star? My board's lighting up like crazy."

Star lay back in her ejection seat. "Just relax, Marco. Those are airborne radars and fire control radars. They can't see us. Give our engineers some credit, will ya?"

The easiest way to increase the line-of-sight of a radar is by putting it atop a high mountain – or better yet, an airplane.

Sweat continued to drip down Marco's face as a torrent of radar warning lights came on.

"Star? Do you think we'll make it back home?"

Star pulled on her cowboy hat. "Well, partner, between our cattle-rustIin' skills and our trusty steed, I give us even odds of makin' it back across the border with our loot."

Marco cracked into a smile. "Do you think that the old saloon'll still be there when we get back?"

Star gripped Marco's hand. "Your parents live in a suburb. We're gunning for enemy missiles, not carpet-bombing their cities. They'll be fine."

Marco grunted. "Easy for you to say. Your mother's probably safe and sound on an airborne command post somewhere…"

Star threw off her hat. "Don't you dare say another word about my mother, Marco Diaz! Mom might be an annoying snob, but even if she didn't give a crap about the country, she'd give a crap about me! Mom would not send us into the frying pan unless she thought we would win this!"

The fact that the National Command Authority would be a prime target for an enemy decapitation strike went without saying.

Star inhaled. "I don't even know whether my mother's still giving those orders. Maybe she's dead, and Lekmet's giving the orders. Or maybe someone further down the totem pole is."

"Sorry about that." Marco bent over, and picked up Star's hat. "So, partner, ready to hit the road?"

Star continued to stare into the distance. "Star?"

"Marco. Look up."

Shimmering curtains of red, green, and purple aurorae covered the sky from horizon to horizon.

Marco's jaw dropped. "It's beautiful."

"The nuclear exchange in orbit must have injected so much plasma into the Earth's magnetic field." Star took her hat from Marco's hands, and slipped it on. "Reminds me of the Christmas decorations at your place."

There probably wouldn't be Christmas decorations this year. Even in a purely counter-force exchange, the disruption to the economy caused by a nuclear war would mean hard years ahead.

"That was a fun party, wasn't it."

A flash bulb went off in the night, blacking out their flash goggles. Marco pulled the blackout curtains over the cockpit windows, and turned to his display. Light from another flash slithered under the closed curtains.

Radar warning lights began to blink out, one by one.

Star smiled. "Oh good. The party's started."

=/=

 **Low-altitude penetration bomber Bonehead 12**

 **Entering enemy airspace**

The sleek, swing-wing B-1 bomber roared across the ice-covered ocean, flying barely twenty feet above white pancakes, powdery ice shelves, and ocean so blue it was almost black and leaving a spray of snow and water in its wake.

Alfonzo took deep breaths as he examined his threat screen, currently occupied by six radars – each hell-bent on shooting down their bomb-laden bomber with surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

In the midst of a nuclear war, it was almost certain that those SAMs would have nuclear warheads. Even a near miss would be fatal.

Janna leaned over Alfonzo, and nodded. "Jamming on. We've got six squawkers. Follow the route along… highway 171 once we hit dry land. The ridgeline'll give good cover from ground-based radars."

As a non-stealthy bomber, the B-1 relied on hugging the ground to stay beyond the line-of-sight of enemy radars, using the curvature of the Earth as cover from beams of radio energy. Smart use of hills, valleys, and other terrain features would keep the aircraft even further out of sight of ground-based radars, keeping the aircraft hidden and safe.

Two dots disappeared off Janna's screen. "Good. Ground stations at K-1 and H-3 are off or down. The stealth bombers must be clearing a path for us."

The shoreline loomed ahead of the wave-hugging bomber. Jackie's eyes widened as she made out white-capped waves, a rocky beach, and a working lighthouse through the gloom. In an instant, the bomber had crossed the shoreline, and began to jink up and down as the automatic terrain-following control system kicked in. "People, we are feet dry. Stay strapped in."

The minutes passed.

A new dot appeared on the screen, and Janna cursed. "Crap! We've got an AWACS right on top of us! Bearing six-five-point four west, distance one hundred kilometers, altitude thirty thousand feet! Crap crap crap! They've got us!"

Jackie gulped. Airborne radars (or "AWACS"), with their "look-down" capabilities, could readily track ground-hugging aircraft all the way to the horizon – and from their vantage points high above the earth, the horizon was hundreds of kilometers away. "Janna, nail the bastard!"

Janna's fingers fumbled as she worked the controls, but hundreds of hours of drills kicked in almost automatically. "Got a lock. Missile away."

Beneath the aircraft, bomb bay doors opened, disgorging a short, stubby nuclear missile into the freezing gale that rushed past the bomber. Massing nearly a tonne, the Short-Range Attack Missile – SRAM for short – was optimized for destroying ground targets with its 300-kiloton nuclear warhead.

It was guesstimated that, with upgrades to lock onto radars, it would be adequate against big, slow cargo planes with heavy radars bolted on top.

The SRAM's rocket motor ignited, and the huge missile roared into the sky as it accelerated to twice the speed of sound.

Janna exhaled. She had actually fired a live nuclear weapon. She had unleashed the equivalent of 300,000 tonnes of TNT – twenty Hiroshima bombs, and as much raw firepower as all the bombs dropped in World War II.

Man, it felt good.

A flash lit up the night sky. "She's gone." Alfonzo breathlessly reported.

A cacophony of lights lit up the threat display. "SAM, SAM, SAM! Enemy missiles, fifty six west! ECM on! Chaff away! We've kicked the hornet's nest!"

"Weapons free, weapons free!" Jackie was practically screaming.

Janna smirked. "Got the launch site. Magnum. Magnum. Missiles away."

Two more identical nuclear missiles streaked away from the aircraft, and Jackie pressed the aircraft to the ground.

"SAM inbound… turning… turning… it hit the chaff!" Alfonzo was jubilant.

A blinding flash lit up the night sky, and the aircraft shook as the shockwave overtook it.

"Second SAM closing…"

Jackie dragged the B-1 across a ridgeline, and turned a hard right.

"Second SAM has lost lock. No detonation. Third SAM… off the screen. Looks like a dud."

Two flashes lit up the night sky. "SRAMs have hit. No duds. That SAM site's glass and ash."

"Another site! SAM, SAM, SAM!" Alfonzo pointed to his screen.

Janna hit her controls. "Magnum. Magnum. Missiles away."

"Site four just lit up! And we're coming up on site five!"

Janna cursed. She had used five of her twenty nuclear missiles in a matter of minutes. At this rate, they would be out of nuclear missiles by the time they got to their primary targets. The original plan – the one they had drilled time and time again - had been to destroy site five only, but the enemy airborne radar had ruined that plan. But doctrine was clear on the matter:

The trick to winning was to blow up SAM sites until the enemy got too scared to turn their radars on. At that point, bombers could bomb with impunity.

"Magnum, magnum, magnum, magnum. Missiles away."

Ferguson gulped. "We've got interceptors in the air. From the looks of things, they don't quite know where we are."

"Site six just lit up!"

A flash lit up the night sky as Jackie brought the hundred-tonne bomber through a particularly tight bend in the valley. "Where the heck are the interceptors coming from?! There aren't any airbases on our route!"

"Magnum, Magnum! Missiles away!"

Ferguson turned to his map. "There's a small civilian airport near this town here. They might be flying out from there."

Dispersing fighter jets to remote strips was a prudent – and widely used - measure in times of high tension.

Another nuclear fireball rocked the aircraft.

"Get confirmation!"

The aircraft shook a third time.

Janna gulped, and turned her radar to high power for a peek. A dot rose from the town Ferguson had mentioned. She turned it off, and hoped that the enemy had not picked up on the radar. "Confirmed. Magnum. Magnum. Missiles away!"

Another flash filtered through the blinds drawn over the cockpit windows.

"Impact. No duds."

No new lights appeared on the threat board.

Scores of mushroom clouds rose, almost at random, from the enemy countryside as dozens of bombers literally blasted their way through the enemy air defense system – and were in turn blasted by scores of nuclear SAMs.

Alfonzo's jaw dropped. "Did we just…"

Jackie checked her watch. They had been over enemy airspace for nearly an hour. "Stow it, Alfonzo. We're coming up on our first target."

"We just blew up a town! What if those bastards retaliate against a civilian target? Did we just escalate this thing?" Alfonzo turned to Janna. "Do we even have the authority to shoot at…"

"Stow it, Alfonzo!" Janna turned on her targeting radar. "Mancrabicki industrial complex is… destroyed."

"What?" Jackie turned towards her weapons officer.

"It's gone. Radar's showing a huge dust cloud over the place. Probably hit by one of our ballistic missiles. Maybe another bomber." Janna exhaled. This was not exactly bad news.

"Alfonzo, what else do we have on our target list?"

"Mancrabicki dam. Hydroelectrical power and irrigation control installation. Ivonna tractor factory complex. Ivonna district nuclear power station."

Janna checked her radar. "No dust clouds on the dam and power plant. The factory's dusty."

Jackie made up her mind. "One SRAM on the industrial complex and the power plant. Just in case they missed. I'm not risking my plane for something that might be gone or a tertiary target. Let's blow the dam and go home."

"Magnum. Magnum. Missiles away." Janna frowned. "You know, that nuclear power plant is pretty tough concrete. Might need a bigger nuke."

Jackie made a rude gesture. "Screw it. We're going home."

"I want to go home." Ferguson said.

Everybody tensed as Jackie pulled the aircraft up for a bomb run. All waited for the seemingly inevitable SAM shot.

Janna turned on her radar. "Dam's intact. Fifteen klicks. Heading good. Automatic bomb release in ten, nine, eight…"

"…three, two, one…"

"Bombs away!" Jackie gunned the engines, carrying the plane as far from the dam (and the two balloon-parachute-fitted nuclear bombs) as possible.

Two tiny suns, each with the power of two million tonnes of TNT, blossomed to life on the surface of the huge wall of earth, concrete, and steel rebar.

The weakened dam could no longer hold the millions of tonnes of water pushing at it. It collapsed, unleashing a great torrent of water, mud, and radioactive rubble that swept downstream, devastating and poisoning villages and towns along the river as it went.

"Detonation!" Janna whooped.

"Dear lord, we're going home!" Ferguson screamed in jubilation. "We're going home! We're… Bandits, bandits, enemy interceptors! Three Foxhounds, bearing two-two-zero, closing fast! Jamming!"

The cabin shook as Jackie pushed the bomber to the deck. They must have been spotted while ascending for their bomb run. "Can we hit 'em with a missile?"

Janna shook her head. "They're behind us. Too low, too fast!"

"Crap, crap, crap! Two still have lock!"

"Ridgeline up ahead! I can dive for it if you want to drop a nuke!"

Janna targeted something outside a missile's maneuvering envelope, overrode the computer, and launched a SRAM. "Magnum! Missile away!"

The missile turned as sharply as it could, failed to make the turn, veered into the ground… and detonated.

Too far away to be of use.

The aircraft shook. "Two bandits still have lock… AIM! AIM! AIM! Missiles incoming! Brace for…"

One missile failed in-flight. One missile detonated fifty meters ahead of the aircraft. And one missile struck true.

The bomber began to spin wildly – less than twenty feet off the ground.

The last thing Janna remembered before she blacked out was the roar of an ejection seat, a gale of bitterly cold wind, and indigo skies.

=/=

 _Parts of the Cold War were lousy with nuclear weaponry. Nukes were deployed on virtually all weapons systems, from air-to-air rockets to infantry-portable bazookas to artillery rounds. Nuclear defense suppression was the doctrine of the USAF for at least part of the Cold War._


	4. Chapter 4

**Small Anti-Submarine Warfare Aircraft**

 **Flight deck of an Aircraft Carrier**

 **Enemy Waters**

Tom Lucitor double-checked his straps, gave the catapult controller a wave, and inhaled sharply as his aircraft was catapulted off the heaving deck of the carrier in a whoosh of steam. He slowly exhaled as the aircraft climbed into the dawn sky, and turned to his flight crew behind him.

Kelly gave him a thumbs-up from her antisubmarine warfare console, and the other crewmembers nodded.

"Okay, guys. Higher-ups want us over patrol box six. I'll… tell you when we get there." Tom had never been the best at motivational speeches.

"Why patrol box six?" Kelly tilted her head.

"I… dunno. Command has their reasons, I guess. Maybe they heard something on SOSUS." Tom shrugged.

SOSUS was a hemispheric network of underwater microphones linked to ground stations by long cables, each capable of detecting sounds produced by fast-moving submarines thousands of miles away. In conjunction with similar microphones towed by specialized spy ships, it was widely believed that SOSUS could detect noisy, fast moving submarines across a quarter of the world's oceans – under ideal conditions, of course.

A dedicated antisubmarine warfare (ASW) aircraft, the S-3 Viking had not been designed for air combat. Instead, its design had emphasized long range, high efficiency, and large internal volume. As such, it looked like a stubby, baby-sized cargo plane.

They were over box six in no time at all. Tom looked out the window at the icy seas below. Somewhere, down there, between the slips of ice floes and icebergs, enemy submarines lurked. Some were hunter-killers, bent on blowing up carriers and escorts to bits with nuclear torpedoes. Others were fleet ballistic missile submarines, ready to unleash nuclear hellfire at their enemies should they receive their launch orders.

"Keep an itchy trigger finger on those depth charges, Tad." Tom checked the predawn skies, and turned on the radio. "Better keep a lookout for enemy fighters, too. We do not want to ditch in that stuff."

Kelly turned on the magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), and a long tail emerged from the aircraft. "MAD deployed. If there's a metal fish down there, we'll get it."

Tom tapped his fingers. "I always hated the waiting part of fishing. You know what I mean?"

They waited.

"Attention Angler-2-3, this is Sandtrap. We just lost a destroyer west of your patrol box to a nuclear torpedo. Grid square 7. Go get 'em."

Tom scanned the sea for debris as they approached the grid. "There's nothing left."

Kelly checked her MAD. "Of course there's nothing left. It was a nuclear torpedo. I'm getting nothing here. Sonobuoy away."

A little microphone-equipped float– a sonobuoy – fell from the aircraft into the dark waters below.

Kelly concentrated on her headphones. "Nothing yet." She winced. "Aw, hell. Nuclear detonation. Another one." She checked her instruments. "Same direction. Looks like a pair of nuclear anti-sub rockets, by the looks of things. The noise is going down now." Kelly smiled as her MAD registered a signal. "We're close."

Another sonobuoy fell into the water.

"Bingo. I've got a contact. Rattling like hell. Sounds like the enemy sub didn't get away without a scratch."

A pattern of sonobuoys hit the water.

"Localizing… got a bearing. I think we can prosecute."

Tom proceeded with the bombing run.

Kelly grinned. "Sounds like a twin screw sub. Ballistic missile boat. The destroyer must have run right over her."

Tom smiled. This was a great victory for the Navy's attack plan.

Three aircraft carriers, dozens of escorts, and a score of submarines had been run deep into enemy seas, through a gauntlet of enemy ships, aircraft, naval minefields, and submarines, in order to destroy the enemy's ballistic missile submarines. Unlike friendly ballistic missile submarines, which tried to disappear into the vastness of the oceans, the enemy's noisier ballistic missile submarines were instead held back in heavily-defended seas – bastions – where they could be protected from attack.

So far, that protection had been unsuccessful. A major naval battle was gutting the enemy's submarine ballistic missile force, wearing down the enemy's nuclear forces until the enemy had nothing with which to retaliate.

"Set to two thousand feet. Maximum yield." Kelly dropped her arm, and Tad hit the release.

A nuclear depth charge, slowed by a small parachute, plunged into the icy waves, sinking like a stone – that is, rapidly.

A hundred stories beneath the waves, it detonated with the explosive energy of ten thousand tonnes of TNT, creating a massive bubble of steam and a powerful shockwave that ripped through the deep sea, destroying all before it – including the hull of an enemy ballistic missile submarine. Against the energies of the nuclear blast, the many inches of titanium that protected the submarine from the crushing depths afforded little more protection than tissue paper.

The bubble of steam began to rise, but surrounded by thousands of feet of cold seawater, it could not remain steam for long.

The bubble cooled, contracted, and collapsed. The pressure fell dramatically, causing the water to boil anew, and the bubble to expand once more.

Several cycles later, all that remained of the vast energies of the explosion was a plume of hot water, slowly rising from the depths.

"We got 'em!" The crew whooped silently.

The radio crackled to life. "Attention all Anglers, this is Sandtrap. We have inbound cruise missiles… oh crap…" The radio died, and another radio came to life. "Uhh… Anglers 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, divert to grid square six six zero and descend to five hundred feet. Discard previous flight plan – the carrier's a pile of radioactive scrap at the bottom of the ocean. Await instructions there."

The crew fell silent. Tom was the first to speak. "Well. It looks like we'll be seeing a new flight deck. Meet new people. That sounds like fun, right?"

* * *

 _In the event of nuclear war, US carriers were expected to last two days… or less. US naval strategy during the 80s was to push carriers as far forward into Soviet bastions – the Barents Sea, Kara Sea (in summer) and the Sea of Okhotsk – as possible. There, patrol aircraft would conduct aggressive antisubmarine operations against Soviet ballistic missile submarines hidden in those waters. US naval forces might also launch airstrikes against Soviet targets ashore._

 _The plan was controversial. Some feared it might not work, some thought it would remove forces from protecting convoys crossing the Atlantic, and others considered it destabilizing._


	5. Chapter 5

**Stealth Bomber Nachos 42**

 **Approaching target area**

"Okay, partner. Do we loose a nuke on that thing or what?"

Star, deep in thought, tapped her chin twice as she examined the radar image on Marco's screen and compared it with a radar picture taken several years ago. "It kinda looks destroyed…"

The smooth, weathered contours of the mountain were gone. In their place were an overlapping field of jagged crests, each marking a nuclear bomb crater. Star noted that some of the craters were unusually deep, as if a warhead had struck the same area multiple times. Thick palls of dust hung over the ruined mountain.

"Destroyed? More like obliterated! Do we really want to give us away just to make the rubble bounce once more?" Marco pulled on his sombrero. "We still have plenty of cattle to rustle."

Star chewed on her lip. "We stick to the plan. Those ballistic missiles may be accurate, but they aren't very good at makin' earthquakes and collapsin' bunkers. What we need is a freefall bomb!" Star sing-songed the last part. Star leaned on the stick for a bomb run. "Forward, my steed!"

Fusing to penetrate into the earth before detonating (as opposed to detonating on the surface) is not quite practical for ballistic missile warheads, which hit the dirt at six kilometers per second – enough to liquefy even the toughest warhead. It is practical for freefall bombs, which hit the ground at much slower and much more survivable speeds.

Marco sighed, and feverishly worked his targeting radar – no mean feat, considering the changes in the landscape. "We are on-course. Target point identified… barely."

"Bombs away! Yee-haw! Hard to starboard!"

The aircraft banked right, putting as much distance between the nuclear blast and the itself as possible. A shockwave rippled through the aircraft, and Marco turned back to his screen. "Two impacts. Good run."

Star checked her navigation system. "Now let's go rustle some cattle."

=/=

The radar satellite, one of the last of its kind still in orbit after the initial exchange, passed noiselessly over enemy territory at over seven kilometers per second – so fast it missed the curvature of the Earth even as it fell down towards it, causing it to fall endlessly in a circle around the earth.

From its perch, two thousand kilometers above enemy airspace, it could surveil vast tracts of land with its powerful synthetic aperture radar, piercing cloud, rain, and even tree cover to identify highly radar-reflective metal objects and objects on the move. In mapping mode, the radar could intensely scan smaller areas to generate radar "pictures" sharp enough to identify vehicles.

Far below, the taiga slept. Beneath skies drenched in shimmering curtains of red, green, and purple, miles and miles of coniferous forest stretched to the horizon, sheltering the snow-covered frozen bog beneath cone-shaped ranks of branches adorned with needle-shaped leaves.

The roar of a diesel engine punctuated the night. A monstrous, fourteen-wheeled truck, a gargantuan missile laid flat on its back, slowly trundled through the forest. Guided by green-clad green monsters waving paddles, it slithered slowly around trees and small lakes like a giant, ungainly snake.

The transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) ground to a halt. True to its name, motors whirred to life, raising (erecting) the ungainly missile to the sky.

Buff Frog put his stopwatch away, pleased with the performance of his men. The enemy radar spy satellite would pass over their position again in another hour, at which point they would have to move again – on the off-chance that they had been detected.

The section leader had not considered the top-secret stealthy reconnaissance drone passing a mere 30,000 feet over their heads.

=/=

The data from the satellite downlink had been spot-on. With its help, Marco had been able to map the positions of nearly every launcher in the regiment using his powerful ground-mapping radar, penetrating cloud, tree-cover, and darkness. Dozens of metal objects stood out like sore thumbs on Marco's radar "picture", against a background of roads, terrain, and scattered buildings.

"…and… here's the flight plan. Launchers marked." Marco tagged the positions on his map, and Star gave the route a glance over.

She gave Marco a thumbs-up. "Looks good to me. Beginning bomb run."

Marco turned the radar on, and adjusted the picture. "There's our first cow. Right where we saw it last."

"Bomb away."

The aircraft banked left as it headed towards its next target.

"Cow two. Bomb away."

A shockwave reverberated through the aircraft. Star pulled on the stick again.

"We're having steak tonight!"

"Cow three. Bomb away."

Another shockwave passed the bomber, and it shook.

"Char-grilled! No, roasted! No, barbequed!"

"Cow four. Bomb away."

"Eat forest fire, you bastards!"

=/=

Buff Frog rushed to his command trailer, ignoring the bite of the winter night.

An artificial sunrise – the third one in as many minutes - suddenly lit up the night, and Buff Frog felt a wave of heat wash over him.

The last artificial sunrise hadn't felt hot.

Buff Frog dived to the ground, and shrouded his face with his arms.

A tremendous blast of air rushed through the forest, snapping branches like twigs and hurling them outward. Someone screamed.

It was Lobster Claws. That idiot had always insisted that "duck and cover" was a waste of time.

Ignoring the cuts from the tree branches on his arms and legs, Buff Frog stumbled into the - beautifully intact! - launch control center.

His friend was waiting at the key station. Buff Frog punched in his launch code, grabbed his key (already in the keyhole), and nodded.

Two keys turned simultaneously.

A kilometer away from the command van, a missile shot out of its fourteen-wheeled carrier with a hiss of compressed gas. Free of its cylindrical case, the missile's rocket motor ignited, and it raced skywards.

Another flash ignited the night sky – instantly setting the forest aflame. A powerful shock wave ripped through the treeline before the trees could burn properly, scattering smoldering ten-storey trees as if they were matches.

Buff Frog's command vehicle rocked twice, and the power went out. Someone cracked a torch, and bolted for the door. Buff Frog put a hand on his shoulder.

"No. We stay in here until the attack finishes."

=/=

Star leaned over the instrument panel and craned her neck as the missile shot skywards. "Marco, they're getting away!"

"Cow Thirteen. Bombs away. Right turn. Three minutes to next drop point. We're dropping bombs as fast as we can, Star. They spread their missiles out well. There's nothing we can do."

Star chewed her lip. Each missile launched skyward was potentially another three cities wiped off the map.

"Bombs away. Right turn. That's it. We're empty."

Star whooped, and waved her cowboy hat wildly. "After striking their blows for freedom, the two banditos live to fight another day!"

Marco furrowed his brow. "We're not out of the woods yet, Star."

Star shrugged. "It's not like their air defense system'll still be up and running after we blasted it to pieces. If they didn't catch us on the inbound, I find it highly unlikely that they'll get us on the outbound."

Marco tossed a map book towards Star. "We need to find a place to land. I would suggest flying over the center of the country – they've got the most airports in the smallest towns."

Star flipped through the map book with disinterest, and tossed it back to Marco. "You deal with the flight plan over the homeland, Marco… I'll… just fly the plane."

=/=


	6. Chapter 6

**SUBURBIA**

Angie Diaz emptied the waste bucket into the toilet, and sighed with joy as the toilet gurgled as it flushed. "Well, at least the toilets are still working."

Mr. Diaz, one ear to the radio, shouted from the basement. "Try to avoid flushing. I know not when we will lose water pressure."

Mrs. Diaz hurried back down the corridor, taking care to avoid any windows and remain close to the center of the house. While all the windows, chimneys, and doors were sealed and intact (as far as she could tell), and the city had not been hit, their house was probably coated with radioactive dust falling out from the sky – fallout. Penetrating gamma radiation emitted in all directions from dust particles might go through thin brick, glass, and sheeting, and travel some distance into the house.

The dust wasn't actually glowing with radiation – it seemed to show up as black specks on the plate outside, and nuclear radiation was invisible to the human eye – but it might as well have been.

Exposure to the radioactive dust for a short period of time would probably have few ill effects – if she felt any. But if she inhaled the dust, or if it stuck to her clothes, or if she spent too much time outside or near a window, radiation poisoning would set in, of a severity proportional to duration and intensity of exposure, and inversely proportional to the amount of protection. At the moment, the slightly-to-somewhat increased long-term risk of birth defects and cancers would be the least of her worries.

A man rode past the window in a bicycle. Mrs. Diaz ignored the idiot, but hoped that he could have a shower wherever he was going.

"I wish we had a Geiger counter." Mrs. Diaz sat down next to her husband. "Did the radio say anything while I was gone?" She knew Rafael had been crouched next to the radio throughout her excursion to the bathroom, the dial set to the yellow civil defense triangle, ready to alert her to an imminent attack if one was announced.

"Just another fallout warning, dear. The wind is carrying the dust from the destroyed missile silos inland. It is very extensive, and will get worse over the next few days." Rafael sighed.

Angie frowned as she inspected the active radio. "Shouldn't we turn it off to save batteries?"

Rafael shook his head. "Perhaps in a few hours. But the war is still very hot, and things are happening quickly. There may be attack warnings."

Angie's throat went tight. "Any word on the bombers?"

Rafael held back a sob. "No. They are saying as little as possible. I guess for… secrecy."

Angie wiped her eyes. "They expected most of the bomber fleet to get caught on the ground in a surprise attack. This wasn't a complete surprise, so he should be fine. They wouldn't let all of our bombers get blown up. They need him alive as much as we do."

Rafael tried to speak, but the stack of board games and puzzles they had brought into the basement caught his eye. He had spent so many hours playing snakes and ladders, monopoly, checkers, chess... with his little boy. He choked, and gave his wife a hug.

=/=

 **TUNDRA**

Janna's head pounded, and her mouth tasted horrible. Her room smelled horrible – like burnt grass. She groggily opened her eyes. A sea of grey-black stared back at her.

That wasn't her bedroom ceiling.

She stretched her arm out for her alarm clock, and felt soggy grass instead.

Something fell from the grey-black predawn sky above her. A snowflake? Why was it snowing in her room? She swatted at it, and it caught on her hand.

The snowflake was grey. She was in her flight suit. The snowflake was ash.

Well, crap.

Janna jumped up with a start, and kneeled back down as the frozen arctic wind bit into her. She unclipped her harness, and looked around for an instant. She then remembered where she was, and kept her eyes close to the ground.

No point getting blinded staring directly into a nuclear explosion.

She looked over her gear. Survival kit, check; water, check; rations, check; sidearm… check. Her flight suit was stained with ash.

Double crap. She had dropped groundbursts all across this tundra. This wasn't just ash. It was fallout.

It would kill her in hours.

Janna spat twice, and rinsed out her mouth to get as much fallout as she could out of it. She marched off to the nearest depression in the broken tundra around her, assembled her shovel, and started digging.

She suddenly felt very dizzy. Oh no oh no oh no oh no. She did not want to vomit into her hole.

She managed three steps before she retched.

Her hole was finished in no time. Groaning, she dragged her parachute over the hole, and shoveled as much dirt as she could (many inches of it) into the nylon fabric. She leapt into the hole, and pulled the whole dirt-covered tarp over her head. The top cover would stop fallout getting into the hole, and the inches of dirt would shield her from the deadly penetrating radiation emanating from the radioactive dust that was carpeting the entire region in a shroud of death.

She was sitting alone, in total darkness in a soggy hole, protected by nothing other than a piece of nylon covered with dirt in the middle of a nuclear war.

She suddenly felt the urge to go. And it would be a number two, too.

Janna groaned. Her final days would be long ones.

It all depended on the dose of radiation she had picked up from the fallout – which depended on how long she'd been outside and how bad the fallout was.

If she hadn't picked up much in the way of radiation (e.g. 1 Gray (unit), which was still more radiation in one harmful dose than a normal person would expect to take slowly across a lifetime) she would be unharmed (or just a bit under the weather) for a few months, and then suffer from a 3% higher lifetime risk of getting cancer (30% of people were expected to get cancer regardless of radiation exposure).

But Janna was vomiting, and she knew that for acute radiation poisoning to kick in, she had to have picked up at least several Grays.

If her dose had been low (say 1-4 Grays), she'd be nearly completely fine after her initial headache and vomiting, but after a month, as her bone marrow cells died off without replacement, she'd start bleeding from her gums, gut, and skin in a month or so, and probably die from some infection or the other. She'd also lose all her hair. In the long run, she might be at a 3% higher risk of getting cancer – but about 30% of people got cancer in their lives anyway. She wasn't pregnant now, so birth defects wouldn't be a problem now – or even several years down the road. Heh.

If she'd picked up a medium dose, she'd be in deeper trouble. As with before, she'd feel fine for a few days. But, after a few days, as her gut lining cells slowly died off without replacement, she'd start bleeding from her mouth, and the subsequent vomiting and diarrhea would have even odds of killing her by dehydration within a week. A long-term risk of leukemia was also possible, but that was the least of her worries right now.

Janna knew she hadn't picked up a high dose. The seizures, incoordination, and loss of consciousness would have been obvious by now if she had.

=/=

Jackie Lynn Thomas awoke. Bright sunlight filtered through holes in slate-grey cloud layers. She was burning up, and her head hurt like heck. She sat upright, and immediately vomited all over her flight suit.

She was covered in vomit, mud, and… oh crap. Ash. Fallout. She checked her watch.

She had been out in the fallout for nine hours, just soaking up radiation.

Her pants felt soggy, and the smell told her that it wasn't just the mud.

She retched again.

She reached for her harness, but her hands were shaking and refused to move properly. She couldn't move her arms next to her shoulders to unclasp the harness, and her fingers weren't forming up into grips. She blacked out, her body tightened up once, and she began to convulse rhythmically, flexing and extending her arms and legs like a maniac as she seized.

When she came to again, her mouth was bloody, her tongue painful, and she felt more tired than she had ever felt in her life. She only gained the strength to vomit once before before passing out again.

Jackie Lynn Thomas would not awaken again.

=/=

 _The long-term effects of radiation have been, in general, overblown. Studies done on Hiroshima survivors indicate that unless a survivor was exposed to very high acute doses, long-term effects of 0.1-1 Gy radiation exposure were minimal (10% higher relative risk of cancer i.e. increase from 10 to 11%, or 20 to 22%). Current fear of radiation is grossly disproportionate to the actual effects._

 _Short term acute radiation poisoning (as depicted above) occurs when people are exposed to large doses of radiation in very short periods (hours to days). Similar doses, if exposed too over long periods (e.g. years), typically have no immediately perceptible health effects, but may have other long-term health effects._

 _The actual effects of very low doses of radiation accumulating into large cumulative doses over long periods of time (e.g. 1 Gy over 40 years at 0.07mGy per day = living in the outer Fukushima exclusion zone) are currently the subject of controversy; many studies suggest that the effects are minimal, and suggest that the human body is much better at repairing chronic low-dose radiation damage than acute high-dose radiation damage. This is in contrast to current safety guidelines, which use a (perhaps excessively conservative) no-threshold linear model which assumes tiny chronic doses to be equivalent to large acute doses)._


	7. Chapter 7

**Stealth Bomber Nachos 42**

 **Over Dispersal Field**

Star looked out the window. Below her, the lights of the small town glittered, and Star could just see the thin runway that marked its airstrip – a dispersal field, used by Strategic Air Command to spread its bombers across the country so they could not be found and bombed. "We're home free, Marco. Woo-hoo?" Marco was still engrossed in the map book, his face unreadable. "Why so glum, Marco?"

Marco crossed his arms. "Star… the whole "two banditos" thing was fun on exercises, but we just dropped sixteen nukes in a shooting war."

Star rolled her eyes. "We weren't even gunning for civilian targets. Plus, other than the bunker-busters, our nukes were all airbursts."

"Which means we made enough fallout to kill thousands instead of millions. Great trade-off."

Star rubbed her nose. "Argh! We knew this before we signed up for this job! Nobody ever said nuclear war would be clean and bloodless!"

"Making this many jokes about it is still in bad taste." Marco growled.

Star laid back (sideways, since ejection seats aren't quite fully adjustable), and pulled Marco down . "Marco, Marco, Marco. Do you remember why we made jokes about it?"

Marco closed his eyes.

"Because it _is_ horrible. Without joking about it, downplaying the sheer horror of it all… there's no way we could do our jobs. No way we could consider the situation rationally and make clear-eyed decisions. If we actually considered the human implications of our actions – considered the number of hours it took for a casualty to learn how to read, or how much his parents had riding on him, or how much his children loved him… we wouldn't have time left to do our jobs."

Marco kept his eyes closed.

"It's the same on the front lines. It's the same in defense planning. Heck, I've heard it's the same in hospitals and public health! We can't let the weight of our actions paralyze us, so we have to trivialize."

Marco opened his eyes, and nodded twice. "Right."

Star patted his back. "Now let's get back on the ground, and under shelter. Fallout might be pretty extensive."

The landing was uneventful, and the quick shower after the mad dash across the contaminated tarmac was most reassuring. Laughing with relief, Star and Marco stumbled out of the bathroom, and headed straight for the fallout shelter.

The wing commander stepped into the hallway, and gave them each a pat on the back.

"Good work, there, Butterfly. Diaz."

Marco and Star nodded.

The commander's face turned grim. "Get some sleep. We're flying out again in six hours."

Marco's jaw dropped, and Star began to stutter. "…but… but… but…"

"We have more fallout clouds coming in. If the weathermen have their charts right, it's going to real heavy in eight hours. That gives us a rapidly closing window to get one more sortie out. After that, the bombers are going to be covered in fallout, and a pain to refuel and rearm."

Marco closed his eyes, and looked toward the ground. "The war isn't over?"

The commander shrugged. "Who the heck knows? All I know is that I have a fresh target list for all of us."

Star looked at the list. Industrial site after industrial site was listed on the strip of telex paper. "That one's a city."

The commander sighed. "Tit for tat, I guess. They flattened some of ours, we flatten a few back. Get some sleep. You'll need it in the morning."

Star nodded, and marched off, her head slumped, into the crew quarters. Marco just cradled his head in his hands.

=/=

 **SUBURBIA**

Angie and Raphael were in the basement when a massive bang – followed by the tinkle of broken glass – shook the house.

The house upstairs was now off-limits. They had everything they needed in the basement, and there was really no point exposing themselves to the fallout drifting through the broken windows.

As long as the war lasted under four weeks, they would probably be fine.

=/=

 **TUNDRA**

Janna was feeling better.

That is, her head still hurt like heck, and she was still running a fever of 100, and she was still cold, wet, and hungry…

…but the vomiting and diarrhea had stopped for the past two days.

In the oppressive darkness, awful stench, and soggy dirt of her makeshift shelter, Janna weighed her options. With fallout conditions what they were likely to be outside, leaving was not an option – not that vengeful monsters were likely to offer her any help anyway.

But on the other hand, she was living in a literal craphole.

She suddenly felt queasy, and the urge to empty her bowels that she had been trying to ignore for the past ten minutes built up badly.

"Okay, Janna. It's just the stench. It's just the stench."

She lost it.

"It'll pass. It'll pass. Oh my god, I don't want to die of dehydration. I don't want to die."

She turned on a torch, eyed the little blue pill in her survival kit, and then her sidearm.

"I don't want to die."

She turned off the torch.

The battery, like everything else in her little hole, had a sharply limited lifespan.

=/=

 **END**

The author apologizes for the macabre ending. The prospects for a person trapped in the wilderness, without proper shelter, during a nuclear exchange with substantial fallout, are exceedingly grim. Nuclear warfare, for all the clinical talk of megadeaths and percentages - and the gushing about shiny weapons systems - is a very grim subject in general.

While many tales of nuclear war depict an exchange concluding with a ceasefire after a brief few salvos ("it'll all be over... an hour and a half from now!"), a chilling possibility is a nuclear war that never ends, but just continues until both sides run out of weapons. Both sides retain intact control over their forces, and continue to launch attacks in a tit-for-tat fashion, with negotiations going nowhere. A nuclear war may very well carry an inertia of its own. Such a war is especially likely if, after an exchange, the survivors continue to swear revenge for the deaths of millions instead of just giving up the fight (which a cease-fire will be, in essence). It remains uncertain how populations will react to the terrible results of a massed or prolonged nuclear exchange - during which cities may indeed be hit with many nuclear weapons, not just one or two - or how leaders might respond to public opinion during such a war.


End file.
